How to Find Viral Accounts in Your Niche to Learn From (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)

Every niche has a handful of accounts that seem to always know what to post. Their videos travel, their followers grow, and people talk about them. Those accounts are the best free teachers you will ever find.

This guide shows how to find them on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and how to learn from them without becoming a copy.

Not the most famous account in your space. Huge accounts get views because they are huge, which teaches you little. You want accounts that are growing faster than their size suggests.

• Similar audience: their viewers would also want your app.
• Not much bigger than you: small and mid-sized accounts teach the most.
• Recently breaking out: a few posts doing far better than the rest.
• Consistent: they post regularly, so you can see patterns.

Use the words your buyer would use, not your product category. The right accounts talk to your buyer, not about your app.

Followers tell you how big an account was. Recent views tell you how well it is doing now. Compare each new post with the account's usual, which is the middle value of its last dozen or so posts.

Pick five to ten accounts across the platforms you use. Check them once a week. Write down any post that clearly beat its usual and a sentence on why you think it worked.

1. 1

   Note the post

   Save the link and its views compared with the account's usual.

2. 2

   Describe the hook

   What happened in the first second or first line?

3. 3

   Describe the shape

   How was it structured, and where was the payoff?

4. 4

   Write one idea for your app

   How could the same shape tell your story?

Studying an account means understanding why its best posts work, then using that idea in your own way. Copying its words, footage or ideas is not studying. It is unfair to the creator and it rarely works, because your audience can tell.